User Interface Upgrades

Since the last post, I've been hammering away at Quirkwood like crazy, and I've gotten it to a point where I'm happy with the terrain itself. There's a few sections fenced off to zones I've not created yet, but the rest looks great. It'll be onto NPCs and quests shortly, and I'll be able to open that up nicely.

However, the past few days, I've been working through feedback I got from some early testers around not being sure on what they're spending skill points on. And as soon as I read that feedback, I completely agreed with it.

So, I've added overlay screens that provide a whole heap of information to you on the ability, the next level of the ability, the effects it can apply and so on. I've made it pretty modular, so you can now access buff/debuff information by touching the buff icon, or get a popup bit of info from the ability selector - and of course, as the screenshot shows, when you select a skill to potentially upgrade, it will show you some detailed info on both the ability and possible effect it applies as well - current and next level.

I also got a good chuckle as, if to hammer home that this was so badly needed, when I started to look at various skills to test the functionality was working for all skill types, I found a whole bunch of skills that were incorrectly set up. So I'll be fixing those as well as trying to balance them out a bit.
 

Still Snowing!

All I'm doing is more snow and snow and snow.

Importing the assets into the engine, setting up pathing as well as the info the editor stores does take time - and it's rather mind-numbing, but once they're in, they're in.

I do give myself the odd treat-break from the monotony and add a bit more world into the Meltwater Foothills, which are starting to look pretty nice. I've shared the same location here as yesterday, to show how much better it's looking already with the new tiles I've imported into the engine.
 

Quirkwood and Meltwater Foothills

First off - following the launch, I've been working on patching bugs that have been found by folks, and acting on feedback I've gotten.

In terms of bugs, there's not been any show-stoppers - which is fantastic. There's been a few that I've patched, but no "this game constantly crashes" type thing.

I've also kept the code pretty clean in terms of big code changes, so that's given me time and opportunity to build the world out more. And to that effect... I've been really hammering away at Quirkwood and the surrounding areas that will border it.

Part of that process has been pouring new assets into the engine to build out new types of areas, and I've done a lot of work bringing in a Mountain tileset as well as the start of some serious Snow tiles too, which have made for a very refreshing change to the colour palette that I am seeing - which is always a welcome change.

So, the northern end of Quirkwood will be giving way to the Meltwater foothills, while a long way south, and inland I've started making a mountain range.

The plan is to keep at this for a little while longer, just getting all the edges of Quirkwood tidied up nicely, so that I can start dropping in NPCs, creatures and of course, quests to complete!
 

Out with the old Bugs, in with the New

It's probably not so much the "new" bugs - but I've tracked down a bunch of things that I've picked up from the recent release.

I've made things tweak and jump about when they need attention. So if you finish off part of a quest, your quest log will bounce about till you have a look at it. Same for characters that go up levels and can learn new skills. A little jiggle of their character portrait will alert you that something needs you.

I did also go in and fix a genuine bunch of bugs. Using skills from the character screen in landscape mode now correctly shows the Use Skill icon. I nudged the Stat Points about in the character overview screen so they line up better. You can properly now see commentary and game information in portrait mode when in combat. There's a bunch more stuff along those lines too. But you get the idea. Broken or dodgy stuff being fixed.

Oh, yeah, I'm also fixing a few of the conversations that aren't quite good enough - though that's ongoing. 

It's Launched. Go and grab it

The last few days has been full of teeny-tiny tweaks and bug-fixes, but it's ready. I've pushed all the buttons. I've submitted for all the reviews. I've even added a few NPCs in places you shouldn't be yet, but in case you do reach them.

The next few days will be spent trying to find ways to promote this, to hopefully get some players running about and experiencing the game for the first time. The discord is ready to go, so if you download it, jump on there and say hi.

Google Play Store link: Is Right Here

The App was Approved (A.K.A. I can see the light!)

There's been a utter hive of activity here on my end over the holiday and new year period. A good part of that was spend nudging the app through a round of Google Play Store approvals to go live.

And it is with a giddy elation that I can say I submitted and got the app approved to go live.

I did get a few bits of feedback from testers that I agree with, so I'm adding a few tutorial images which I think will make it easier to start and a few teeny tiny tweaks in the code (for example, you really don't need to see the framerate constantly while playing) and it's good to go.

The fantastic news, is that I can now go live whenever I make these changes. And that's going to be soon. Really soon.

 

More Skill-Tree Development

I've been pushing out effects and abilities for the skill-trees almost entirely still.

I've now done the last of the second skill-trees, which was the Archery Tree for the Rogue class.

It has a mix of passive buffs to make your ranged attacks much more potent, but also a number of damage-over-time and debuff options. They will all work with ranged attacks obviously, though some of the passive skills will make your character better at more than just archery itself.

So, with the final class now having two usable skill-trees I might look to implement some more specific and special functionality to use with effects and abilities. I'd like to do something along the lines of Fear and the like. I wanted to also do an effect that changed sides for a creature or character momentarily. Those sorts of things will need some extra code to be written up, but nothing too dramatic. Oh, and one more thing that came up... I have the ability for an ability to put effects on the character, or an enemy, or a location etc... But I wanted to make an ability that puts on effect on a target, and another different one on the character using the ability... so I think I'll need to work out what structure changes I'll need to make to enable that functionality. Again, I don't think it's too hard... but it'll be fiddly and need changes in a lot of little places.